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As part of Advance HE’s initiative on Integrated Thinking and Reporting, Janet Haddock-Fraser considers the notion of integrated leadership as a means of mobilising institutional action.

As universities jockey for position and purpose in today’s complex public-private dynamic, having the right sort of leadership to embrace integrated thinking – and its reporting – is vital to understanding and actually adding value to the institution and its key stakeholders.

Of course, this is easier said than done! When you start to consider what ‘the right sort of leader’ is, the list of attributes is eye-wateringly ambitious. Integrated thinking and reporting requires connectivity and interdependencies between a range of factors, consideration of all six capitals (find out more here) and a good understanding of key stakeholders and their legitimate requirements. It also needs to fit any strategy and action to institutional business models as well as financial and other performance expectations.

Adding into the mix the enigma of academic cultures (and there is rarely a single organisational culture within a university), multiple disparate views on institutional purpose (from staff, students, community, government etc), the leadership task could seem overwhelming. To adapt Elizabeth Bennett’s response in Pride and Prejudice to Mr Darcy’s full list of an accomplished lady’s attributes: “I am no longer surprised at you knowing only six…..I rather wonder now at your knowing any”.

Leadership theories and models abound about ‘good’ leadership. These have developed from early, prescriptive models identifying traits (innate personality characteristics) and styles (interpersonal interaction), to recent models where leader as individual is viewed within the organisational context, seeking the ‘sweet spot’ where context and individual work productively and constructively.

More recently, leadership models have developed exploring the attributes required for leadership to manage sustainability. By sustainability, they refer to the complex dynamic between economic, societal and environmental sustainability not just institutional/financial ‘viability’. Exploring these provides valuable insights into what the ‘right’ sort of leadership needs to be for integrated thinking and reporting, as they parallel the holistic nature of integrated reporting (IR) through consideration of all six capitals.

Each recognises that leaders are dealing with a plethora of challenges, including: (i) definition of purpose (i.e. what is the organisation trying to achieve?); (ii) competing priorities in the institution (particularly when it comes to a multi-faceted agenda such as IR offers); and (iii) the complexity of the decision-making process.

Additionally, the integrated leader is likely to be able to influence others outside of the traditional line management relationship. Facilitation, influencing skills, relationship-building and emotional intelligence become front and centre.

As with leadership theories more generally, there is no single leadership model presenting ‘best practice’ here. Rather, there is a range of suggestions to take forward:

The need for ‘systems intelligence’. This means that the individual needs to be able to analyse complex situations across disciplinary/functional boundaries and between academic and professional services functions. This approach has been termed ‘deep systems leadership’.

The individual needs to be able to deal with uncertainty (in the ‘evidence’ or data being presented). Not everything can be monetised or measured, but trade-offs may need to be made, and the concept of understanding value and the consequences of trade offs, (monetised or not) is crucial to integrated thinking.

Vitally, the individual needs to communicate and build relationships throughout the organisation, be inclusive and diverse in their approach, and able to understand others’ perspectives, bringing direction in a collaborative, co-creating way. Integrated thinking requires whole-institutional involvement and cannot take place within the finance or strategic planning teams alone.

These suggestions speak to a transformational leadership approach. Here the leader mobilises action in an organisation whilst transforming values, attitudes and behaviours of followers. This presents substantial challenges in universities as leadership may be able to present and convince others of the value from integrated thinking, but the stalling point of existing hierarchy and governance in the university can stymie progress.

Many leadership models look to the attributes of the individual (as discussed above) but also the context they are operating in (in this case the university sector). There are particular challenges facing integrated leadership here:

It may not be clear where decisions get taken, as integrated reporting requires consideration of the parts as well as the sum. The agenda affects so many aspects of the institution – and so many committees, working groups etc – that to take forward change could be slow progress!

Integrated thinking will invariably involve presenting ‘value’ from academic activities in a range of new ways, and leadership needs to be able to speak legitimately to the academic agenda and academic cultures to gain traction.

Integrated thinking will require the senior leadership team and governing body to understand its value, which presents a significant change of approach to the current KPI processes, league table, ‘excellence’ frameworks and so on currently used. Integrated leadership needs to find a means by which integrated thinking and reporting is incentive-compatible with these embedded measurement tools.

The value of ‘our people’ (human capital) and relationships – both internal and external – must be here as one of the challenges.

Fortunately, decision-making processes do exist which offer help here. The first of these, termed the Core Business Integration for Sustainability (CBI-S) model has been developed through the Center for Health and Global Environment at Harvard University. This model provides a helpful means to understand the need for interplay between a university’s Command-Control Operating System (CCOS, or ‘hierarchy’) and its Adaptive Operating System (AOS, or how things happen and get discussed in teams, project groups and informal interaction). The ability to explicitly embrace both mechanisms helps integrated leadership build deep engagement and commitment.

The second process, Living Labs, has been embraced by many universities through work by the Environmental Association for Universities and Colleges (EAUC), as well as individual institutions such as the University of Newcastle in its development of its Institute for Research on Sustainability. The concept is deceptively simple: it provides a geographically-grounded opportunity for multiple stakeholders to engage in and work on real-world problems. Additionally, it provides a means though which experimental approaches, such as new techniques for governance, can facilitate change. Where they have been used by universities, they create a legitimate platform to further understand the wider value of universities to their city-region, through engagement with public and private sectors and government.

Approaches required for successful integrated leadership will require a radical change in how universities take forward decision-making and governance. The first step is to give integrated leaders the tools and training to persuade senior leadership and governance that – through enabling integrated thinking and reporting – that institutional and societal-wide benefits will follow.

Janet Haddock-Fraser is Professor of Sustainability and Leadership at Manchester Metropolitan University, as well as Chair of Trustees for the EAUC. Her recent book, ‘Leadership for Sustainability in Higher Education’ (Haddock-Fraser, Rands and Scoffham, 2018) provides more detail on the concepts discussed above.

Join us on 11 September for our conference “Let’s Talk Value” to find out how and why we should include this in our institutional offering. Sessions include “Valuing our people – HEI’s hidden assets”, “Beyond Metrics: transparency, credibility and storytelling…” and “Getting the Board on board with value”.Book your place.

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On her second day at the Leadership Foundation, Alice Hargreaves, senior marketing and communications coordinator attended our Higher Education Insights programme for leaders new to the sector. In the run up to the April 2018 cohort of the programme, she reflects on the impact the programme had on her as a participant.

When I joined the Leadership Foundation last May I had only worked in a university briefly while overseas, so had little understanding of the context in which higher education sat here in the UK. As well as meeting new colleagues who I would be working alongside, Higher Education Insights provided me with the opportunity to better understand the complexities, nuances, and politics in the UK.

Start with why

In order to understand where the sector is now and where it is going it is of course vital to know where we have come from. One of the first sessions of the day summarised the history of higher education and how this history has shaped it in a way that is different in other parts of the world.

I like the analogy that Christine Abbott recently used in her blog post about this sector being much like a tube system where sometimes it is hard to know how we got to where we are and feel that this session really went some way towards answering this.

Learning from others

I’m a natural networker so found the opportunity to sit and work with a small table of new faces really exciting. I learnt about roles in the sector I didn’t even know existed and also learnt about private universities which I must admit I had been unaware of previously. I was sat with someone from Regent’s University and found the opportunity to ask direct questions about the differences in their student body and how they operated fascinating.

Having the opportunity to get to know the challenges colleagues are also new to the sector faced was a fantastic way of better understanding how a range of universities worked (including pre and post 1992 as well as private universities), and how different the experiences were for professional services staff vs academic staff. It struck me how open my table were to discussion and it spurred me on to apply to take part in Aurora.

The shape of the sector, right here, right now

I found the talk hosted by Nicky Old, director of communications and external relations at Universities UK a fantastic way to understand policy changes. Nicky explained who Universities UK were, who the sector is, and who the key decision makers are. In May 2017, we were just a month away from a general election, and the big issue facing UK universities was the Teaching Excellence Framework (TEF) as well as the ongoing repercussions following Brexit. Gaining information so relevant and of the time was invaluable. When the TEF results were released some six weeks later I could much better understand the context and how this might impact universities.

Now, having worked in the sector a bit longer I am able to see how things develop over time but this really put me into the here and now, or rather the then and there.

The many faces of higher education

Knowing much more about the Leadership Foundation and our programmes and events now than I did last May, Higher Education Insights truly is a unique opportunity to meet the many faces of the sector. As well as the range of participants it attracts the speakers had a huge range of perspectives and experiences. As well as voices from the Leadership Foundation and Universities UK I was lucky enough to hear from; a futurist from JISC, a dean from Canterbury Christchurch, a student engagement consultant from The Student Engagement Partnership and an ex NUS president.

The day really buoyed up my enthusiasm for my new role and it was reassuring to know I was not the only person so new to the sector. The day I think is equally as valuable for someone brand new to the sector, as someone who has simply been stuck underground in the tube system of higher education for two long and needs to reconnect and get up to date with the ever changing environment that we are faced with.

Higher Education Insights will take place on Tuesday 17 April 2018 in London. Nicky Old, director of communications and external relations, Universities UK and Ellie Russell, student engagement consultant, National Union of Students will return as contributors to this year’s programme. Find out more: www.lfhe.ac.uk/heinsights

After three years and six iterations of the Leadership Foundation’s innovative blended learning programme, Transition to Leadership (TTL), programme director Stuart Hunt reflects on what he has learned and why he believes the programme is so well received by participants.

When we were working on the design of the TTL programme, we were very keen to make sure that it included two elements that are not often seen in open, introductory level programmes of this kind. We have three days face-to-face and about the same amount of time for online and on-the-job learning activities, and we wanted to make the most of this time. We did not want to lecture too much (and we don’t!), nor did we want the programme to involve a lot of reading (there’s plenty, but only limited to Must Read material), but we did want some clear structure with a real chance of participants holding onto some key ideas and actually putting these into practice. The two elements described below are what emerged from our extended development phase to help achieve these ambitions.

Co-creation
The first approach was that we wanted the process to be one of co-creation. Sure, we provide theoretical grounding and effective models for participants to review and build on, but we also take advantage of the blended and extended nature of the programme to task participants with co-designing and co-presenting their own understandings and applications of leadership based around their own experiences.

This concept of the ‘flipped’ classroom, with participants leading presentations and fielding questions from colleagues lends itself well to the culture of learning in higher education, with typically independent-minded colleagues having the opportunity to explore, challenge, and occasionally provoke, as well as to provide mutual support and personal reflection. It also provides ample opportunity for colleagues to explore the second key theme, that is self-knowledge and with it the great boon of flexibility.

Self-knowledge
Throughout the programme, we ask participants to reflect on their own styles, their own preferences, what they admire in others, what they bring to leadership that is helpful and where they may need the support of colleagues. We do not encourage participants to aim to become that which they are not. We want them to know what they are really good at and what motivates them, and to consciously seek to demonstrate these attributes to colleagues with whom they work. It is only when we know ourselves that we are in any position to deliberately choose to modify our behaviour and to become really skilful leaders. And thus the programme is filled with diagnostics, self-assessments and structured self-reflection activities, plus face-to-face and online discussions to help people understand that others may have very different perspectives.

Enhanced understanding of self
So, the content of TTL is great and I think well balanced, and this is supported by good design, but the real benefit of our programme for participants is the co-creation of understanding based on the perspective of our lived realities, together with a genuinely enhanced understanding of ourselves. Together these approaches combine to enable participants to make choices, so that they can sometimes ‘flex’ from their places of strength in order to be better able to support the needs of others with whom they work.

The programme continues to evolve to meet the ever-changing needs of higher education leaders, however the core of the programme remains tried and tested as a foundation for new leaders. I am genuinely proud of this programme.

The next run of Transition to Leadership will being on Monday 19 March 2018 and run through until Tuesday 26 June 2018. Click here to find out more about what the programme has to offer.

Stuart Hunt is an independent consultant and has been a key associate of the Leadership Foundation since its inception. He is currently co-director for the Transition to Leadership programme. Stuart is also currently supporting a major cultural change initiative across Ukrainian Higher Education.

Christine Abbott is a facilitator of Leadership Matters, the Leadership Foundation’s programme for senior women in higher education. Christine has has spent almost all her career in higher education, most recently as university secretary & director of Operations at Birmingham City University. Here she considers how women can achieve senior roles in the sector and how Leadership Matters can support this.

It is often said that success, in any walk of life, is less about what you know, than who you know. In our now extensively connected world this is increasingly true. Nevertheless good networks alone are rarely enough. Certainly successful leadership requires the ability to engage with people, to understand their motivations, and to recognise and develop their talents. But in addition, a sound bedrock of knowledge and experience are also needed. However the work environment is now so complex, and in such a state of continuing flux, that claiming to know enough to fully understand one’s organisation can seem a fanciful statement.

The tube map of universities

Navigating the current higher education sector, or even one’s own University, can sometimes feel more like travelling in the London underground than following the A to Z. A tourist in London might go down into the tube at Marble Arch, and pop back up at Westminster, and recognise the landmarks in both locations; but they may have little idea of the route between the two places, or what sits above ground as they travel through the tunnels. In our Universities this feeling of limited understanding can become a particular concern when colleagues move from one role to another, or from one department, faculty or service area to another. Moving between institutions or gaining promotion can exacerbate that consciousness of the blocks or blind spots in our understanding.

Why Leadership Matters

The aim of the Leadership Matters course is to fill in some of those gaps in understanding and knowledge, by looking at the frameworks – the strategic, financial, and governance frameworks – within which our institutions operate. Participants on previous cohorts have often been those who have gained promotion to middle or senior management positions, which bring them, perhaps for the first time, into a broader University arena, and feel there are gaps in their understanding of how the whole University entity fits together and functions.

The programme aims to help participants to get to grips with how their University operates, how it takes critical decisions, and the financial, legal, and reputational considerations that impact upon its decisions.

Module one, which is led by Gill Ball and myself, aims to ‘humanise’ some potentially dry topics, such as funding and finance, governance and decision making. Through practical small group work there will be plenty of opportunity for hands-on learning. Module one also includes a session led by a senior woman leader from the sector, on ‘navigating the organisation’. This session links the organisational perspective with the individual and personal, and provides the bridge into the Action Learning Sets and module two.

The second module, which is led by Rachael Ross and Sally Cray, focuses more closely on how to develop the personal impact necessary to be successful as a senior woman leader.

Impact of the programme

Leadership Matters is now being run for the eighth time, and from the outset the Leadership Foundation was keen for the programme to be women-only. The programme director, Rachael Ross, and the programme leaders have discussed a number of times the rationale for this, since as concerns module one, the topics discussed, and the approaches used, are gender neutral. Our conclusion, which has been reaffirmed after each of the cohorts that we have led to date, is that the women-only aspect of the programme enables a particularly rich and reflective quality to the discussions. This is most notably the case in the Action Learning Sets, and in module two of the programme, as colleagues draw upon their personal experiences of leadership and their leadership journey. As programme director Rachael Ross says: “We find that our senior delegates value a women-only programme. They are able to deepen their understanding of these key topics in an open, reflective way, challenge themselves to “claim” their unique leadership approach, and build a supportive network of women leaders right across higher education.”

It is the blend of the broad organisational perspective with the personal that makes this programme special.

At more junior levels in one’s career, the concern is primarily to be able to provide the answers to the questions you are asked. The more senior your role, the more important it becomes to know the questions to ask, how to ask them, and to whom those questions can and should be addressed. The Leadership Matters programme is designed to help female colleagues to identify both the questions, and the audience for those questions, and so to develop their confidence and effectiveness in their leadership roles.

Leadership Matters will be taking place in Manchester and Bristol in Winter, and Spring respectively in the next academic year. For more information and to book a place please click here.

We are delighted to have launched our 2017-18 governance year with a joint event with HEPI, the leading policy institute of higher education in the UK. In this blog post we provide a summary of the debate on the challenges facing good governance that took place last month, which included contributions from governors and governance specialists from within and outside of higher education.

Following adverse comments in the press on its leadership and speculation about changes to the future funding of the English higher education system, the panel session organised by the Leadership Foundation and Higher Education Policy Institute on the challenges facing good governance in higher education proved timely.

The panel brought together individuals working in higher education, those who had chaired and served on governing bodies and those involved with regulation and governance in other sectors of the economy. Panel members offered different perspectives on higher education governance, noting areas of strength, but also highlighting aspects of governance that needed attention.

The context of the discussion was the scale of change facing institutions. ‘Winners’ and ‘losers’ were emerging from competition for students and funding. Balancing the academic and business aspects of running an institution had become more challenging. A dynamic environment made conventional five-year strategic plans a thing of the past. The changes were placing greater demands on governing bodies, changing the manner in which they needed to operate.

Central to good governance was the relationship between the head of the institution and the executive team and the governing body. A culture of openness and trust, was needed to encourage governors to act as ‘critical friends’; able to question and support the institution’s leadership as appropriate. There should be ‘no surprises’. The role of governors was summed-up as ‘noses in; hands out’.

Good governance meant that it was insufficient to focus on structure: attention needs to be paid to processes. In this context, it was important to examine how governance really operated, and not how it was described on paper.

Engagement of the governing body with the institution was critical: ‘lazy’ governance should be avoided. Governors need to hear about issues, while being mindful that the actions to address any issues raised would normally fall to the executive. Effective engagement might mean, for example, participating in staff and student forums held outside of the formal meetings of the governing body. Similarly, in the reverse direction, academic staff might need to be educated about the work of the governing body and its members. Each needed to understand the other.

The composition and orientation of a governing body was key to underpinning effective governance. As governing bodies were now expected to seek assurance about academic governance, the need to have lay governors with an understanding of the higher education sector had grown. Equally, it was important to have members who would forensically examine matters in great detail (e.g. in relation to matters of audit and compliance) as well as individuals who had a deep understanding of finance. Similarly, a governing body should have individuals amongst its membership who had a creative mindset, thereby helping to avoid a governing body becoming overly risk-adverse.

Governors must be able to demonstrate that they are competent in discharging their responsibilities. There should be a process of governor evaluation allowing a conversation between, say, an independent governor and the chair of the governing body to take place at regular intervals. Where a governor was unable to contribute effectively, the individual should be asked to step-down from the governing body.

Chairs and heads of institutions should discuss and agree how the governance within the institution would operate. Setting the right ‘tone’ in the boardroom was crucial. This could, for example, mean encouraging the executive to share ideas, as part of a process of testing and development, with the governing body at a formative stage, rather putting a chosen and well-developed option to the governing body for endorsement.

There was a high-risk that following the most recent criticism levelled at higher education, the sector would respond in a defensive manner: this would be a mistake. The danger was that the sector ‘feels sorry for itself’. Far better to reflect on the matters raised, consider carefully and then respond. Universities also had the opportunity to learn from the mistakes made in other sectors, and to avoid making the same mistakes. The observation was made that ‘universities don’t have the right to be silent’. Accountability was an essential part of autonomy. The risk was that if institutions did not take early and effective action, someone else would.

It was noted that in comparison to other professions such as law and medicine, academic staff were in an easier place in relation to professional codes of practice. For these other professions, there were explicit codes of behaviour, and an individual was at risk of facing sanctions if they failed to adhere to them.

An element of radicalism was needed in relation to institutional governance. The following conditions needed to be met:

• Governance needed to be perceived as honest and independent
• The role of a university, including the balance between teaching and research, needed to be made clear
• The processes of governance needed to be sufficiently open and transparent
• ‘Active’ trust needed to be achieved

Critically it was important to invest time into making the board process meaningful.

As one speaker noted, being a governor might be characterised as ‘intelligent people, asking stupid questions’.

David Williams is the editor of the Leadership Foundation’s governance website. We are hosting a major governance conference Governance: Improving Effectiveness for a New Age on Thursday 30 November. To book places for this conference or on our other governance development programmes and events, or to access our governance resources please go to www.lfhe.ac.uk/governance

To find out more about the work of HEPI, and also whether your institution is a member of the HEPI University Partnership Programme (providing advance embargoed access to all HEPI reports and briefing papers), please contact Sarah Isles, s.isles@hepi.ac.uk at HEPI.

In advance of the Leadership Foundation’s announcement of the universities that will be taking part in the new Integrated Thinking and Report project, Kim Ansell, managing consultant, sets out why the time has never been so important for getting to grips with creating and communicating value.

Setting out long-term plans in the face of sector-wide turbulence is a challenge for every executive team and it is clear that given very recent government policy commitments, many of the assumptions underpinning institutional strategies have to be revisited, even if they were written as recently as a year ago.

These strategies are often being pursued in isolation without a real understanding of the wider risks and potential to destroy rather than create value. At a time when universities are facing ever more scrutiny and public accountability some have started to embrace a new way of thinking and reporting based on the Integrated Reporting Framework. This framework goes further than simply describing an organisation’s financial performance and among other things describes its contribution to society, the environment and its own community and stakeholders.

One of the challenges that universities face is summed up in a recent article on Media FHE by Professor Nick Talbot, deputy vice-chancellor for research and impact at Exeter University, on how higher education can defend itself from critics. He asserts that, “It is almost as if there were two higher education sectors – the ‘schooly’ bit and the ‘researchy’ bit, which exist as separate islands”.

Although written in the context of the Research Excellence Framework (REF), this remark makes the case perfectly for integrated thinking, and the Leadership Foundation believes that if universities can create a joined-up approach to thinking and reporting, aligned to clear business and value creation models, they will more successfully navigate the journey ahead and overcome barriers to sustainable strategic planning.

In particular, the need to be able to communicate to all stakeholders (from employees and governors to students and strategic partners) that the institution is creating value in the short, medium and long term is critical to leadership success.

With this in mind we are planning to unpack the concept of Integrated Reporting and facilitate the journey; to think about the full range of resources (or capitals), for example:

Intellectual Capital

Human Capital

Social and Relationship Capital

Financial Capital

Environmental Capital

Understanding the trade-off between such resources when making strategic decisions is something which could be more successful and provide more sustainable outcomes if done in the context of an informed and disciplined approach to integrated thinking.

University leaders need information that assists them in making sense of a complex world and the direction of travel their institution is likely to take. There have been a plethora of articles recently, referring to changing business and financial models in universities, public value and value for money. Equally there continues to be events, conferences and articles ‘talking’ about institutional strategy, but the Leadership Foundation aims to take the talking one step further: to test and evaluate what works and to provide some real examples of how universities can mobilise integrated thinking and reporting to drive value creation and to implement a sustainable and successful strategy. With the support of an expert steering group, and building on previous work done by British Universities Finance Directors Group, we will consider what universities need to do

In this new work we aim to tackle sensitive issues with objectivity and equip institutions and their governing bodies with the skills, knowledge and insights to be able to evidence and report on holistic value creation and contribution, and provide necessary assurance on this key topic.

The time has never been better for universities to look to integrated thinking and integrated reporting to help them on their journey through these turbulent times in UK higher education.

One of the most effective techniques we use in our leadership development interventions is to provide leaders with a simulated environment. This challenges them to confront complex, highly interwoven performance management and operational issues. But how effective is this in practice? We spoke with Paul Hessey, Leadership Foundation associate, who leads on this activity on our Leading Departments programme for new heads of department.

How does a simulated environment work?Based on a very realistic university scenario, this usually involves the programme participants working in groups of six along with three actors who take on the roles of stakeholders and the dean. The simulation is designed to present participants with realistic scenarios they might encounter in their day-to-day work as a head of department. This gives the facilitators the opportunity to help participants’ identify their weaknesses and strengths and enables us to offer guidance and best practice on how to approach difficult situations.

What are the three main benefits of using a simulated environment on a leadership development programme?

Participants are reminded of some simple, robust and powerful theory of influence and learn the skills they need to put that theory into practice in a safe environment.

Reflect and receive tailored feedback on strengths and development opportunities.

Be part of a rich and diverse range of colleagues from both professional service and academic roles, and benefit from observing a wide range of approaches to influencing in action.

Have participants ever surprised you with how they reacted to this type of role playing style activity?Our approach is more ‘real play’ than ‘role play’ because essentially the participants are experimenting with being themselves in the scenario, rather than taking on a character. In terms of being surprised by how participants react to these activities I am always taken aback by the way participants are committed to a mythical department. They really immerse themselves into the activity and come up with creative ideas and solutions. During a programme’s coaching sessions I found that many participants realised that they want and need to take a more strategic view of their role; in particular delegating more so they can take a step back to better develop and promote their own department through running events and engaging with a pool of stakeholders. These scenarios also increase their awareness of the importance of owning their professional profile and reputation.

What would you say to those who are sceptical about real playing on a leadership development programme?Real play has an interactive approach which means participants can take a very practical look at how people communicate and influence, and then experiment with different approaches. Real play gives participants the chance to safely assess and practice an expanded range of influencing, management and leadership techniques to help them better engage their own diverse stakeholder base.

Higher education is a very unique sector. In your years of experience of working in different sectors, do you notice any similarities?Many! People face the same challenges other sectors do in terms of politics and culture. However, in higher education people are perhaps more motivated by their desire to achieve their professional objectives rather than financial incentives. In higher education environments in particular, I’ve noticed that leaders may have less access to organisational benefits and consequences to motivate those around them. They are therefore often seeking to achieve action in their institutions by influencing others without any direct authority or power to demand action. Instead they must find a way to overcome resistance and challenge and encourage staff to buy-in and commit to the mission in a positive way. Many participants have said that they leave the Leading Departments programme feeling more equipped and confident to do exactly that.

Paul Hessey is the programme director for the Leading Departments programme, designed to develop the leadership skills of heads of department. The booking deadline is Friday 6 October, to find out more about Paul or to book onto the programme visit www.lfhe.ac.uk/leaddepts